Miles to Go Before We Agree

Whether or not SOAR flies at the ballot box in November, the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources campaign is casting a growing shadow on the political landscape.

Ventura County has spent decades lamenting the dwindling of its farmland even as it has done a better-than-average job of keeping development under control. This is a crucial year in which controls on growth are likely to become tighter, one way or another. Polls show that most residents favor that goal, although the method remains hotly debated.

Key questions are what to do with the county’s undeveloped land, how to do it and who will do it.

The Santa Paula City Council last week voted to stretch its sphere of influence--the ring of territory it claims for expected future expansion--enough to quadruple the size of the city. The action was part of a General Plan revision five years in the making, yet SOAR added a now-or-never urgency to the vote. If SOAR passes, establishing urban limit lines for each city beyond which any proposed development would need voter approval, such land grabs will become far more difficult.

The council majority showed little interest in the concerns of the Santa Paulans who filled its meeting room Monday night to urge a more moderate expansion and to question how building $300,000 homes in Fagan and Adams canyons is going to benefit current residents or make financial sense for the city.

Also last week, the Oxnard City Council voted to place a SOAR initiative on the fall ballot, although the city may pit it against an alternative measure in the same election.

Meanwhile, members of the Ventura County Agriculture Policy Working Group labor mightily to translate a mountain of collected data, desires and potential strategies into a clear set of recommendations. Their goal is to give elected officials tools to accomplish what SOAR supporters want without relinquishing quite so much authority to the voters.

Some believe SOAR oversimplifies a complicated issue by purporting to protect farming solely by controlling land use. If SOAR oversimplifies, then the working group appears headed in the opposite direction.

In contrast with the eight-page SOAR initiative and a six-page proposal offered by the Ventura County Farm Bureau, the working group’s latest draft is 21 pages and growing--bloated with too many considerations in too much detail. If this report is to have any impact, it must be a clear and focused statement the public can easily compare and contrast with the SOAR approach.

The working group set out last summer to chart the areas of agreement among the various groups with a stake in the survival of Ventura County agriculture. Where those areas of agreement end and interests diverge, it aimed to suggest preservation strategies everyone could live with.

Already, it has found quite a bit of consensus, largely thanks to forward-looking new leadership at the Farm Bureau. It is good that SOAR is catalyzing so much discussion about alternative ways to go about the task.

We agree with the overall goals of containing urban sprawl and preserving the agriculture that is so fundamental to Ventura County’s economy, atmosphere and lifestyle. The choices are becoming clearer. But there’s still much work to be done before November.